


a decade of alaskan winters

by lord_is_it_mine



Category: True Detective
Genre: Complete, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, I Don't Even Know, Introspection, Love Confessions, M/M, One Shot, POV Multiple, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 01, Run-On Sentences, Short One Shot, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-22 19:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19982212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lord_is_it_mine/pseuds/lord_is_it_mine
Summary: "You-" Marty asks, dumbstruck, and there's so much packed into that one word. "Me? That long?"Rust sighs. "Yeah, it looks that way, Marty. Looks that way."





	a decade of alaskan winters

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is. I haven't watched this show in years but I had a piecemeal version of this fic in my drafts and felt compelled to finish it.

Marty didn’t expect that having a wounded, listless Rust in his home would be easy. So it’s no surprise that he doesn’t get a lot of sleep in the beginning. He is a lone ship, buffeted by the ever-changing winds of Rusts’ sporadic moods. Rust goes from catatonic to manic to ornery to morose to cheerful in the blink of an eye. It's impossible to keep up.

His mood is dependent on anything and everything; his medication schedule, the time of day, the weather outside or the specific guest star on whatever re-run of Law and Order is on, only part of the endless drawl of legal dramas and daytime television that make up the eternal stream of background noise in the apartment. Rust’s judgments of characters and plots are arbitrary and cerebral, just like whatever force drives and decides the changes in his mental state.

Overall, the mood swings trend downward. So of course, it’s only a matter of time before they find themselves bickering with each other.

“Fuck you, Marty,” Rust growls, following Marty around the kitchen table while Marty holds the pack of cigarettes aloft, out of reach.

“No way, Rust. Doc said your lungs are solid tar,” Marty says as he pulls the cigarettes out one by one, peeling away the paper, tearing the filters out and snapping the remaining pieces in half. “You’re lucky you’re not fucking dead from your injuries, let alone from ten different kinds’a cancer.” He’s one to talk. He’ll probably be on a liver transplant list by this time next year if he keeps on the way he’s going with the booze.

The mutilated remnants of Rust’s bad habit fall to the ground in a haphazard trail of tobacco carnage. Rust goes down on his knees, gathering the bits in his hands.

“Come on,” he pleads, hands upturned, in a pose of complete supplication.

The hardest part of having Rust around twenty-four-seven is that Marty is confronted daily by his long-standing and deeply repressed desires. He frowns, banishing the memories of all the times and all the ways he has imagined Rust on his knees. This is the wrong moment for such a fantasy, though far be it from Marty to deny what he is; a lecher and a coward.

“I don’t even know how you got these, and I don’t care.” He holds up a finger to stop Rust from protesting. He snatches a roll of lifesavers of the counter and tosses them in Rust’s direction. “I’ll get you some nicotine gum or some shit. But for now, suck on those. It’ll give your mouth something to do.”

And before Marty can think too much about the fact that Rust is still kneeling and that there’s a double meaning to what he just said, he spins on his heels and goes off to work.

* * *

Rust quickly becomes addicted to the lifesavers.

He had been resolved to stay angry with Marty after the destruction of his cigarettes- but, of course, his anger with Marty has never been sustainable, not even when it concerned the more severe of motivations. So his ire quickly fizzles down to nothing more than the flickering embers of frustration, stoked only by the need to appease an addiction, rather than anything Marty had done.

In the short time that he has been here, Rust has done his best not to abuse Marty’s hospitality. He refrains from waking Marty up if Marty has been out late, letting him get all the sleep he so desperately seems to need. This had lead to an argument though, a few days ago, when he had negated to wake Marty in order to change some of the many bandages that Rust has been wrapped in, figuring it was unimportant enough to wait. 

When Marty had woken and realised they were behind schedule, he fretted about Rust’s stitches getting infected, letting slip his stoic facade to show the mother hen within. Rust had made sure to be more helpful after that, to make up for the worry he’d caused, pitching in with cooking and cleaning and the like when he felt well enough, even though Marty grumbled about that too. 

Rust has insisted multiple times that Marty take his bed back, that he doesn’t have to sleep on the couch, but Marty won’t engage in any sort of debate about that subject. On that, he is unwavering. Rust needs it more than he does, he insists, says he won’t fall for Rust’s self-sacrificing shit for a second.

Rust goes through the entire roll of candy within twenty minutes of Marty leaving for work. He sits on the couch after that, stares at the wall and considers his options. He could make a break for it, hobble down to the corner store at the far edge of the neighbourhood, until he remembers that he has no money. 

And even if he somehow could score a pack of cigarettes, he’d couldn’t hide them for long. He may be craving nicotine more than oxygen right now, but he’d be a clown and a fool if he thought he could hide any illicit contraband from Marty. The man never lost his detective instincts, his senses and intuition. And, for reasons Rust cannot fathom, Marty cares about him, so he will try harder to protect Rust from himself than he might if it were someone else.

And of course, this is negating the fact that Rust is at a starting disadvantage in the game of hiding things from Marty- when Rusts loves someone, he has a much harder time lying to them.

* * *

After a few weeks, they’re both going a little stir crazy. Rust’s lifesaver wrappers are piling up all over the apartment. Marty has long since forgotten what it’s like to have a back that doesn’t hurt, a spine that isn’t molded to the lumps in the pull-out couch mattress.

They’ve adjusted well to each other, all things considered. Marty has been happy to find that once Rust got over the worst parts of quitting smoking, he’s been generally less glum and less likely to snap at Marty for random things. He comes and goes from work, and the apartment is clean when he comes back, and he reminds Rust to take his meds and to eat when he forgets to. It’s almost like they’re an old married couple with no secrets or tension between them.

Every once in a while, though, Rust will brush against him in the tight space of the small kitchen, or their hands will touch when they reach for something at the same time, and Marty will be viscerally reminded of the low, long-burning flame, the steady current of desire that can be ignored but never quashed. So he moves away, snatches his hand back, and goes about his business. Things are as good as they’re going to get. He can live with this. Nothing needs to change, as long as he doesn’t fuck it up.

And then, one afternoon, on his way to work, he does just that.

“Job’s a classic,” Marty tells Rust. “Woman wants to divorce her rich husband, but there was a prenup.” He grabs his wallet and keys off the counter, pockets them, and moves toward the door as he talks. “She heard he’s got a couple girls on the side, which would mean the prenup is void and she could clean him out. But she needs proof.” He takes his gun belt off the hook by the door, and hikes his duffel bag strap further up his shoulder. “There’s some leftover lasagna in the fridge, you need to eat some of it. I’ll stop by the corner store on the way home, get some milk, we need eggs-”

“Lifesavers,” Rust reminds him, following him to the front door as Marty opens it and steps into the hallway. “You forgot your coffee.”

This is the moment Marty will obsess about for eons to come. He’s in something of a hurry, he hasn’t had his coffee yet, and there Rust is, holding the travel mug out to him in the open, morning-lit doorway, and he forgets to shield against the ever-present impulse.

He does it with little effort- in the end, it’s easy as breathing, to reach out and take the coffee from Rust’s hand, to lean in past the threshold and kiss him once, simply and softly, without warning or ceremony. Rust’s face is whiskery and his lips taste like those fucking lifesavers and that nasty black coffee he drinks.

And he’s standing stock still, frozen, eyes wide, petrified.

And then Marty realises what he’s done.

And then he bolts, leaving Rust stunned, empty-handed, red-faced and slack-jawed.

Just like that, he’s ruined everything.

* * *

The problem with having permanent neurological damage is that anything could be a cruel trick of the mind. Rust has been living with it long enough that he knows when he’s being tricked. But today he is tired and sore and hasn’t had a cigarette in two weeks, and so it takes a minute, standing alone in the doorway, to realise that what just happened has actually just happened.

He puts a hand to his lips, feels the breath coming out of his lungs, hot on his skin, and cool as he inhales a moment later. He steps back inside, shuts the door, leans against it.

Marty kissed him. Marty kissed him and then looked horrified with himself and ran. Rust has gotten what he wanted and had it taken away from him again, all in the span of two minutes and it all hits Rust so hard that he feels like he’s gotten whiplash.

“Well shit,” he says to himself, quiet, sad. “Shit.”

* * *

Normally, Marty would be tailing his mark right now, following them with a camera until they tripped up and did something to incriminate themselves. But this time, he already knows what his mark is up to, and where and when he’s going to get up to it. He just needs photographic evidence.

Tonight, the husband, Tim, is going to be at the Motel 6 on the West side of town. He’s meeting one of his girlfriends there. It’s a weekly occurrence. Marty loves it when people are predictable and stupid. Makes his job so much easier.

Marty beats Tim to the motel by an hour- he parks his car outside the motel office, spreads his camera and kit on the front seat next to him, and his recently procured fast food on the dashboard in front. His tinted windows make it dark and gloomy inside the car, and the daylight outside is beginning to fade. Marty leaves the lights out inside the car anyway, so as not to draw attention, and then he waits.

The fries are oily and salty and do nothing but make hip thirsty. He licks his fingers clean and takes a sip of Sprite and focuses intently on the entrance to the parking lot, consciously ignoring the looming thoughts of earlier, of the hallway and the fluorescent lights, and Rust’s mouth, Rust’s mouth, Rust’s-

A high end sedan turns the corner into the lot, glossy black under the streetlight, and Marty’s first thought is _wow, he really is a dumbass_ , because it’s like the guy isn’t even trying to be covert about all of this. No one in this part of town drives anything remotely like that, that new, that clean. Even Marty's car is ten years old and caked in dust.

Marty wipes his hands on his jeans and grabs his camera, lifts it and begins to snap pictures, close-ups of the license plates as the car pulls into the parking spot at the end of the row, closest to room eight.

The husband, Tim, a tall blond man of about forty, climbs out of the driver’s seat, clicks his key fob to lock the door behind him. Marty captures the moment of apprehension, Tim looking over both of his shoulders before he approaches the faded, dingy motel room door. Marty keeps shooting constant, progressive pictures as Tim knocks on the door and looks back once again, eyes passing right over Marty’s car but not seeing him, until his attention is drawn back when the girlfriend opens the door.

Only, it’s decidedly not a girlfriend.

The man who answers the door is shorter than Tim, a little younger, with dark hair that falls in his face.

Marty watches, stunned, barely remembering to take any more pictures as the two men embrace and Tim disappears into the room.

It’s like someone has slapped Marty in the face. This job, exposing the shitty deeds of shitty people, has always been a sort of self-imposed penance, forcing himself to relive the sins of his past. Kissing Rust wasn’t a sin per se, but it was a mistake, and one that has yet to reveal the full depth of its consequences. Somehow, it’s fitting to have it thrown back in his face like this.

He feels a stab of guilt for spying on this man. Part of him wants to call it quits and go home, but he’s not ready to face Rust yet. He doesn’t know when he’ll be ready.

He waits for three hours, twiddling his thumbs and letting his coffee go cold and listening to bad rock radio until it’s pitch black out, until the motel is nothing but a row of yellow lights on in windows while he sits in the dark.

When Tim leaves the motel, Marty isn’t taking pictures. He already deleted the ones from earlier, and he knows he made the right decision when Tim leans in to kiss the other man goodnight. It’s soft and slow and deep, and it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this isn’t just some run-of-the-mill fling. Marty wastes no time leaving. His client will be pissed, he won’t get paid, but fuck it. He’s not going to ruin anything else today.

He stops at the corner store on his way home, gets milk, eggs, and a fifth of cheap rye whiskey.

The lights are off when he gets in, and he leaves them that way. He kicks off his shoes and drops his stuff by the door, goes to put the eggs and milk in the fridge and sighs when he sees the leftover lasagna, uneaten. He heats it up for himself, turns the TV on, sits down. His bones creak with the springs in the couch. He opens the whisky bottle and wishes he were drunk already.

Later, after midnight, when the fifth is empty and the TV is a blur and he can’t help himself, he stumbles to the bedroom door, left ajar, and stands there, staring at Rust’s sleeping form, lying prone on his back, sprawled across Marty’s bed.

Here is the truth of it- some longings are too deep and too great to be met.

Rust is a wild horse, untamed, unbroken despite everything- headstrong and easily spooked. And if there was anything Marty could have done to spook him- that was it. Frankly, he’s a little surprised that Rust is still here. Maybe, if Marty pretends hard enough, acts like it didn’t happen, Rust will be un-spooked, and they won’t have to fucking talk about it, and things will go back to normal.

* * *

That night, Rust lies awake in Marty’s room, in Marty’s bed, on top of Marty’s sheets, staring at Marty’s ceiling. The pain meds the hospital gave him don’t do much for the pain itself- Marty wouldn’t let them give Rust any narcotics for obvious reasons, and his tolerance for the run-of-the-mill sedatives is higher than that of the average person.

The room, despite the lack of a drug trip, continues to spin, revolving around the fixed point above him to which his eyes have been glued for an indeterminate period. Glittering nebulae bloom in a kaleidoscope above him, endless parades of wispy galaxies, clouds of stars and space dust coalesce into an enormous mirage above him.

The air around him is balmy and clings to his skin- the smell of Marty’s sweat and aftershave, the remnants of his existence, the impressions his feet have left in the rug- all of it cloys to every surface in the apartment, unyielding, inescapable.

He hears the moment Marty comes home, the turn of the key in the lock and the bang as Marty shuts the door behind him. Soft muttered curses and the thud of shoes and a duffel dropped on the mat. Then the buzz of the microwave, clink of silverware, the creak and whine of the couch. The low, conspiratory voices on the TV, turned down.

Blue light leaks through the door, which Rust left ajar on purpose- the flickering glow of late night infomercials. It’s a mere blink in his periphery- it does nothing to impede the dizzying array of his cosmic hallucination.

He closes his eyes. The nebulae keep spinning, but now it makes him nauseated. And then he feels a presence, undoubtedly Marty, looming in the doorway. If Rust opened his eyes right now, he would see him, silhouetted in the tv light, looking in on Rust as he does most nights. Rust can picture the way the back-light would cast a halo over Marty's head, how his shoulders would be tense after a long day. He can picture the old wife-beater and older Levi's that Marty would be wearing, how they cover the parts of Marty that don't intrinsically matter- not his feet, or his arms, or his hands, or his mouth. His mouth. He cannot picture what the look in Marty's face is, or what it must be. But he wonders longer than Marty lingers, and when Rust looks again, Marty is gone. The door is closed.

He does his best to keep his eyes open after that, but his body, bogged down by exhaustion, betrays him. He falls asleep with a desert in his throat and a sky in his head and the ghost of Marty’s mouth on his.

* * *

The next couple of days are strained, to say the least. Silence falls on the apartment like a thin layer of frost over glass, whorls of it frozen in place while everything underneath is slow and cold and white around the edges. Marty is pretty much catatonic, won't so much as breathe anywhere in rust's general direction. He hasn't said a single word about the kiss or the weather or anything. Whenever Rust tries to bring it up, or even tries to talk about anything, Marty will find an excuse to leave the room or just tell him to shut up.

The irony isn't lost on rust- irony rarely ever is. It’s like '95 all over again, when Marty couldn’t stand hearing anything Rust had to say. But this, this is more extreme, to a pathological degree. And he knows that it won't get any better until one of them forces a discussion. It could also get worse, but again, it has to get something before one of them really snaps. 

Fifty hours and twenty two minutes after It happens, rust finally rips off the band-aid. Marty is sitting on the couch, eyes glued to the tv even though he's clearly not watching it. Rust enters the room and stands there, suddenly feeling thinner than he's ever felt, keenly aware of his height and his long arms and the hunch of his spine. He stands a little straighter. 

"About what happened the other-"

"I don't wanna talk about it." Marty takes a sip of his beer. "Ever." 

"That's fine, I just-"

"Really, Rust. Just shut the fuck up." 

It's not a snap, exactly, not yet- he's said it in the familiar and long suffering way that he used to always tell rust to shut the fuck up, during the seven years of statewide road trips and Rust waxing poetic about anything and everything he could think of, sometimes just to see how tightly he could get Marty's fingers to grip around the steering wheel. He used to like to imagine what it was that Marty was keeping his hands from doing. 

Marty puts his beer down and looks at rust sideways, daring him to say something else. 

"I wanted to say that it's fine. It doesn't change things and I won't bring it up again. You obviously weren't thinking when you-"

It’s this that makes Marty snap. 

"No, see, that's the problem!" He's on his feet now, voice raised, arms tense. "I was thinkin'. I think about it all the goddamn time. I ain't never loved anything like I love you and that scares the shit outta me."

Rust, with his persistent lack of anything resembling a bedside manner, simply stares at the wall just over Marty's shoulder and blinks, very poignant-like. When he opens his mouth to speak, he is preempted. 

"And don't you start with any'a your nihilistic bullshit, like how love ain't real, like how it's only a delusion caused by chemicals in the brain and we shoulda evolved beyond it centuries ago or some shit. I don't wanna hear it."

Rust opens his mouth again and waits for a second, for a sign maybe, that this is in fact some new and torturous kind of hallucination. 

"Love is real," he says, when no such sign makes itself apparent. " ’Course it's real. Jesus Christ, Marty, you don't think I know what love is? What, did you think I got this way from never lovin' anything? That's the only bullshit here and you know it." He lifts hand, poking himself in the sternum. "Only something as real as love can fuck a man up this much."

Marty looks like he wants to say something, but it's his turn to be preempted. 

"Only love sends a man on a downward spiral so hard he drives his wife away and ends up a government sponsored junkie for nearly half a decade. Only love makes a man so afraid of someone else's happiness that he shows up to dinner drunk, that he keeps wanting to apologize for it almost twenty years later." 

Marty's mouth snaps shut with a clearly audible click. 

"Only love makes a man try to send help away and go into a drug den by himself," he's on a roll now, spurred on by the vividness of that memory, of a pink Floyd t shirt and blonde hair in the tall grass and you're not doing this without me. "Only love makes a man keep a secret like that." That one might be a stretch, but the point still stands. 

"Only love holds onto itself for seven years until one day it beats a man down and lays him so low that he breaks the only real trust he's ever had. Only love ends in black eyes and broken noses and one of us fucking off across the fucking hemisphere. Only love survives a decade of Alaskan winters." 

Despite Marty's earlier admission, Rust half expects him to be an asshole about it, to cross his arms and tilt his head and ask are you done? and kick rust the hell out. Maybe that's just the response rust has been conditioned to expect. It's certainly not the one he gets. 

"You-" Marty asks, dumbstruck, and there's so much packed into that one word. "me? that long?"  
  
"It looks that way, Marty. Looks that way."

Marty lets out an almost laugh. “Shit, Rust. you're crazy, you know that right?”

Rust shrugs, holds his hands out to the sides of himself like he's waiting for a wave to hit. 

“Well, Marty, you always did like 'em crazy,” he whispers, just as Marty reaches him, steps into his arms, and kisses him again, finally, finally, finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are great, comments are better, both is the best :)


End file.
